Using two plastic scintillators tiles of 12.5 cm x 12.5 cm x 2 cm, we have developed a backpack-size portable cosmic rays
detector controlled by a FPGA-based Arduino compatible board. The trigger is selectable between the AND and the OR
functions between the two available tiles.
In addition to the particle counts, the instrument can measure the time between two consecutive triggers to obtain
distributions of the intervals of particle time of arrivals with two timescales, one of them compatible with the
muon-decay analysis.
Collected data, as well as the intrument configuration, are stored on a non-volatile memory.
The collected data can be downloaded at any moment for further analisys. The instrument can be powered
through the available USB port by a power bank to allow portable operations.
A sound when a cosmic ray passes through the scintillators is generated by the controller that drives also a small
LED display to see in real time trigger and tile signals. If necessary, a larger LED display can be connected.
data and status are shown by a LCD display and all can be controlled by three pushbuttons on the front panel.
An open version of the instrument can accept up to four scintillators and is used to introduce the basic
concepts of coincidence, acceptance, rate, randomness of the events, and allows the students to operate
manually themselves the detectors. Additional, analogue output of the signals is available for further didactical purposes.
A dedicated PC app can remotely control the instrument for an improved interaction with it.